Things to consider for the future - Troop experience, multiple troop types, troop equipment and research, troop design, drop pods and drop ships, boarding pods and boarding actions, etc. Some of them almost made it into Legends, but we had to keep the feature list and resulting development time within what we could afford for this release. If Legends does well, those of you that want more work in this area may be well rewarded.

Elliot has not posted on these forums in any form since early March (2012). Some sign from him in some form would be nice. I would prefer 10 minutes of his time per week responding in some form here vs those 10 minutes spent on coding.

And besides, it works both ways, if they colonize first they block you as well. So the problem is that they maybe don´t prioritize colony ships or colony techs as much as they should. And it´s tricky to balance that, specially because even the player can get a bloody nose if he overextends. I´ve got two games where I was spanked by trying to expand too fast... even if money isn´t a problem most of the time, not having resources or bases can be a pain in the ass. ****ing kiadians can be bad neighbours...

can be easily wiped out, if you don't make critical mistakes and turn off automanager.

No, guys, I say serious. AI in Legends weaker, than in Return of Shakturi. It's enough for me to find 1 (one) derelict (cruiser/destroyer or even frigate) and I can destroy neighbor spaceport, set blockade and wait for training enough troops, which conquer me an enemy capital. Even without cheater ships it's more easier to crash enemy, than deal with it.

I also forgot to say about broken diplomacy. Now for me it has one purpose - to declare war. Create alliances is nearly impossible in Legends and there is need for it. I NEVER saw situation, when a few empires created alliances and kicked me together in Legends. In Shakturi it was very rarely, but was.

I also forget about useless (in my opinion) optimized designs. Very useful for human players, but useless for AI players. There are no surprises in game with this feature. In this topic you may read about my point of view - http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3065137

Probably yes, but after colonizing four planets and losing one of those with an already half-built space port blown (which was the first one I built), it would be a pain. The AI isn´t that retarded, overextending + not capturing as many ships as them = suffering several setbacks. Also, another factor that weighs in is having bad luck with research locations, I only had a high-tech base, was playing as Mortalen with military dictatorship = crap tech rate.

It's also subjective. Some people may prefer small galaxy games that are fast, fierce, two-fisted white knuckle action with phaser and titan beams running white hot. Others might prefer large galaxy games that are slow, languid even. Where the action is mostly sedate until massive fleets collide with mutual annihilation.

Personally, I tend to prefer slower games. I want to enjoy the time where everyone putters around in low tech ships. I don't mind the AI expanding native planet types in a hurry too much, but I'm not particularly interested in a game where the AI quickly snatches up alternate world colonization and rushes to grab up planet after planet, forcing me to do the same just to compete. I want the AI competitive, but on my terms.

A community manager would be fine. While it might be nice to hear from the devs a bit more, I don't think it should be a requirement. A community manager that can be the interface with the devs to get short answers to popular questions or issues appearing in the community would be plenty sufficient, letting the devs avoid community drama and focus on their development goals. If the actual devs choose to drop in on occasion that's just icing.

Meh, if I were the devs Id be kickin it in my lambo pickin up hot NZ chicks and screw the rest. They already made their mil off this game suckas. When you could be spendin your time snortin coke off a stripper in Queenstown instead, even 10 minutes reading geek posts is too much to bear. The rest the time they are probably hung-over or in rehab. Dont worry, they cant sustain their rockstar lifestyle forever and will eventually need to milk us more money (coz they gotta have that oh so sweet juice!) Then they will come back to the forums, become born again christos, and release new expansions (but they just wont be quite as good as their early stuff).

Meh, if I were the devs Id be kickin it in my lambo pickin up hot NZ chicks and screw the rest. They already made their mil off this game suckas. When you could be spendin your time snortin coke off a stripper in Queenstown instead, even 10 minutes reading geek posts is too much to bear. The rest the time they are probably hung-over or in rehab. Dont worry, they cant sustain their rockstar lifestyle forever and will eventually need to milk us more money (coz they gotta have that oh so sweet juice!) Then they will come back to the forums, become born again christos, and release new expansions (but they just wont be quite as good as their early stuff).

LOL dude.

True story, I heard that a new Distant Worlds expansion is announced whenever a hooker ODs in his pool, and he submits all his patches on an iphone in the state pen.